Hello beautiful people! I am here with another one-shot.
As you may or may not already know from previous things I've written, I absolutely love Paul Blofis and I wish we got to see more of him throughout the books. I've been tossing this idea around for months now, but with Father's Day tomorrow, what better time to post it than now? I wrote almost the entire fic forever ago, but then was struck with a better idea for something formatted way differently and I ended up rewriting it and using the original version for something else. For those of you who keep up with my story, Little Sister, you'll probably know what I'm talking about by the end of this.
Anyway, without further ado, please read and, if you'd be so kind, review and let me know what you think. Enjoy!
Percy wasn't sure when he realized it exactly. He wasn't even sure if there was an actual time or event that solidified the idea in his mind. He didn't know of one offhand, but then the current situation provided him nothing if not time to think on it.
The first time he'd met Paul, Percy remembered he wasn't sure what to think. His mom had returned from a date one weekend in early spring and brought Paul up to the apartment with her to meet her son. He had been friendly and polite, shaking Percy's hand and attempting to get to know him a bit. Percy remembered feeling awkward, even as he was thrilled his mom seemed so happy. He reserved judgment of Paul right then, as he seemed a nice enough guy and knew his mom could take care of herself. She had, after all, done it for years, and if she wanted him to meet Paul, it meant she really liked the guy.
He ended up staying for a while that night and the three of them wound up playing a board game together at the kitchen table. Percy won, but not for the others' lack of trying. Paul was a good sport and Percy decided, if he didn't exactly like him, he certainly didn't have a problem with the man.
By the time his fifteenth birthday rolled around, things had been too busy and stressful for Percy to realize anything that didn't pertain to the upcoming war. He definitely liked Paul by now and really was happy he was planning to marry his mom. If things went the way it looked like they were going to, at least she wouldn't be alone once Percy was gone.
He didn't know if it was when Paul finally learned the truth about him, maybe a month after he and his mom got engaged. His soon-to-be stepfather hadn't condemned him or shunned him, hadn't called him a freak or up and left. He'd been skeptical at first, sure, but once he was convinced, he'd thought Percy's half-blood status was just about the coolest thing since sliced bread, and the fact that all the myths and stories he'd taught and always been fascinated by were all true only made it cooler for him. Percy, at the time, was just happy the secret was out and he wouldn't have to sneak around anymore.
When he'd returned home filthy and bleeding after an unexpected monster encounter a month later, Paul had been adequately concerned, but had done all he could to make sure he was okay and had only freaked out a little.
Maybe it had been on the day his mom got married and Paul officially became part of the family. He had spent half an hour before the ceremony with Percy in the dressing room, teaching him how to tie a tie. Or trying to anyway. Percy, of course, had never before had a reason to know or anyone to teach him. Some progress was made, but ultimately it wasn't enough and Paul ended up just doing it for him in the end. Both had laughed about it and made their way out to the ceremony.
A few months later, Percy had come down with a bug while his mom was out of town and spent the better part of two days running to the bathroom. Paul had gone out of his way to take care of him, overwhelmed as he was with the whole ordeal. In the end, there hadn't been much either of them could do but wait it out, but Percy found himself strangely comforted by his stepfather's parenting attempts until his immune system could finally come to his aid. He wondered if the thought had crossed his mind then.
It was Paul who had spared Sally the nerves and taught Percy how to drive a car, and Paul who had trusted him enough to borrow his own vehicle. Percy hadn't been sure what would happen when he sent the Prius back with Pegasus prints imbedded deeply in the hood. He'd definitely been surprised to hear Paul wasn't angry, but rather found the whole thing quite funny. He'd later told him that the dents gave the car character.
Percy didn't think it was when his mom and Paul had shown up in the middle of the Titan War and Paul had dispatched a dracaena with a sword like it was nothing, but he had certainly been impressed all the same.
He thought maybe it was true when he'd returned home after the first war, having lived to see sixteen, with Annabeth in tow, and Paul had been just as thrilled as Sally was to finally see the two of them together.
He wondered if maybe he realized it when the he heard Paul's voice, recorded as the voicemail greeting, when he called home from Alaska almost a year later and the sound of it pierced his heart almost as much as he thought his mom's would have. At the time, of course, he'd had other priorities along with simply remembering who he was, but it stood to reason all the same.
When he finally returned home from the Giant War, after nine months away, and Paul, after allowing Sally her turn, engulfed him in a hug almost as tight as the one he'd received from his mom, Percy thought it might have been then that he noticed.
When his sister was born, he figured that was probably the end of it. The love he thought Paul had for him, which he had showed Percy up to that point, was surely gone now that he had a child of his own to care for. Surely he no longer needed his wife's half-blood teenager as a surrogate. And why should he, with all the trouble he constantly was in? But when nothing changed between the two of them except that Paul now operated on far less sleep, Percy was forced to reconsider that stance. He wondered now if he realized it then, but he didn't know.
At the end of his senior year, during a particularly nasty fight with Annabeth, when Percy had lost his cool and caused the kitchen sink to explode, soaking everything, he didn't expect Paul to understand, conditioned as he was even so long after Smelly Gabe's demise. Surely, even after everything, there was a point at which he wouldn't be able to take anymore. He didn't need more work in life. But Paul had just laughed it off and informed an apologetic Percy again and again that everyone gets angry sometimes, most just don't have the power to wreck havoc on indoor plumbing. He seemed more amused than anything else and asked only that Percy assist him in fixing it. The latter had been too surprised at the time to know if he realized it then.
When Percy graduated high school, he had crossed the stage to receive his diploma and had looked out to see the smiling faces of his family; his mom, holding his sister, and Paul, who knew as well as any of them, just how hard-earned that piece of paper was. He looked as proud as any other parent in the place.
Throughout his time at Goode, Paul had often spent weekends playing basketball with Percy at a park a few blocks from their apartment, and after Percy started college in California, not a single break could go by when he was in town in which Paul did not bring back the tradition.
He was there for his graduation from New Rome University just as he'd been for Goode's four years earlier, looking even prouder than he had then. Maybe that had been when it hit him.
At some point it became Paul rather than Sally who Percy confided in regarding Annabeth and the way he knew he felt about her. He broke the official news of his plans to the both of them together, but it was Paul who went with him to actually buy the ring, and Percy wondered if he'd realized yet.
On the day he married Annabeth, Paul stopped by the room where Percy and his groomsmen were getting ready just to reassure him that the nerves he felt were normal and that everything would be fine. After all, they were made for each other and they'd been through so much. They would be just fine. Percy thought if he hadn't realized it before, maybe he did then.
Every birthday, special event, and accomplishment, for everything from movie nights to swim meets, to the birth of Percy's children; Paul was there for it all. He'd cared for, provided for, and supported him right along with Sally, and he'd never once seemed to even question the decision to do so. And after a while, Percy had stopped being surprised at this and had even allowed himself to expect it.
When the call came that afternoon with the news of what had happened, his heart had ground to a halt in his chest and he'd been surprised at just how scared he was. He wondered, if he somehow hadn't already, if he'd realized it then. And if he indeed hadn't, if it had hit him sometime between then and just a few minutes ago when the news had come that, while things had been uncertain there for a while, it was under control now. Everything was going to be okay. Paul would be fine.
Maybe it had been then, in that moment of nearly overwhelming relief that had flooded his entire being, he had realized it. When the doctor had left, leading his mother back and leaving him and his sister behind to wait their turn and breathe.
Percy wondered if he hadn't known just how much he had until it was almost gone.
It was a heart condition that had brought it all on: the loss of consciousness, the weakness, the trouble breathing; the scare of all their lives. One that had apparently gone undiagnosed until now. They said it was a wonder he'd made it without knowing as long as he did and the surgery was hard, but they found it and fixed it and Paul would recover soon enough.
The relief that Percy felt now, knowing what he did, that Paul was out of the woods, that he would not be losing someone else just yet, was maybe more telling than even the fear he'd formerly felt had been. It was what confirmed what he didn't know he already felt and had for so long. Because Paul was more than just the guy who'd married his mom, who'd taken him in, worked to give him a normal life, and took everything else in stride. He was a teacher and a coach and sometimes even a partner in crime. He was a friend. He was someone Percy hadn't realized he desperately needed in life until long after he was already there. He was his mother's husband, his sister's father, and his children's' grandpa; and he was and maybe always had been a parent to Percy as well. Paul was someone he loved and cherished and looked up to, and he, after everything, was someone Percy wasn't ready to think about living without. He was glad he wouldn't have to, and not just for his family's sake. He was glad, after everyone he had lost, that Paul would not yet be one of them. The pain of such a loss would, by now, probably rival that of one day losing his mom, and neither was something he wanted to think about enduring until he had to.
He was grateful today was not that day.
Percy wasn't sure when he realized Paul was so much more than a stepfather; that it had been true for a while, even while he'd never consciously acknowledged it, and while Paul had proven it to him again and again, that family was so much more than blood. But he knew, sitting with his sister in a hospital waiting room, that he was definitely so much more.
Thank you for reading!